Because I actually do not know; what is an example of a cartridge that does not damage a record?
That is because you do not understand some basic engineering principles.
People think because a stylus is diamond and very hard, and the record soft vinyl record wear must be great.
However the reverse is true. Wear is minimized when a very hard surface moves against a soft one. The hard crankshaft of your car does not move against the hard metal of the piston rod. A piece of very soft white metal is interposed between the two surfaces, so you have hard on soft.
Perhaps the best example of this and a cautionary tale come from the technology of prosthetic joint replacement.
Orthopedic surgeon Sir John Charnley first conceived the idea of prosthetic joint replacement. He set up in the English midlands, the center of the British motor industry in the 1950s. He assembled a volunteer team of engineers from the Morris motor company who worked many a late nights after their work day had ended, to design a mechanically workable and biologically tolerant implant. Scorn was poured on their endeavors and they had no official backing, in fact the reverse.
Anyway the engineers knew what they were about. The femoral ball of the joint was hard, but the acetabular component fixing to the pelvis was lined with a soft plastic. This was a crucial part of the design, and critical to the implant having a long life.
Go forward a few years to the late nineties and early 2000s, and a bunch of ignorant engineers at Johnson and Jonson, came up with, and vigorously promoted, the "All Metal Implants".
I warned our orthopedic surgeons about this basic engineering flaw to no avail. The result was thousands of patients injured around the world, with implants wearing out in under two years, requiring difficult salvage procedures. Worse many had metal shards embolizing around their bodies.
So back to the LP, its essence is good engineering, with very hard against soft. In addition a variety of lubricants were added to the vinyl mix.
Now there two added problems the LP has, since the groove walls are unsupported, so we have the issue of groove deformation. This means that stylus shape, tracking force and compliance of the cartridge have to be considered.
So enter the great Cecil E. Watts of Dust Bug fame. He showed that as far as tracking force was concerned there was minimal elastic deformation at force of 3 GM or less, and that for a good stylus tracking at 2 GM or less there was no permanent elastic deformation. In other words the system will operate within the elastic limit of the vinyl with some caveats.
The stylus must not loose track of the groove. In other words there must be no miss tracking, which will cause more damage than a higher tracking force. This is where compliance of the cartridge comes in. In order to track at 2 GM or less the cartridge must have a very high compliance. The higher the better. In order for there not to be miss tracking playing a warped record, damping is required of the mechanical system. It needs a shock adsorber in other words.
Now most very high priced audiophool turntables do not meet these criteria. They are generally low compliance, high mass, undamped setups.
One company Shure has led the way in low tip mass, high compliance damped cartridges. To my knowledge, only Decca and SME damped their arms, there may be that I'm not aware of.
However
this budget cartridge is very high compliance, is damped, and sounds excellent.
That cartridge mounted in any reasonable designed low mass arm and properly set up, will not damage your record collection even with a huge number of plays. Stylus replacement should be performed after playing about 2000 sides or so.
That set up will fulfill the criteria I set out above.
